Andrea Voß has published, in a special volume of the Neue Bremer Beiträge, her 2015 doctoral thesis in philosophy at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University Greifswald. The period examined is limited to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and focused on travel journals written by aristocrats from the Holy Roman Empire. The author’s purpose was to concentrate on literary studies as a way to analyze travel literature from the early modern age. This new approach to discussing apodemica from the perspective of literary studies is important, as travel literature has been examined so often from historical, art historical, or cultural history points of view. To delimit a clear field of research and achieve a meaningful outcome, the author concentrates on princely educational travel journals written during, not after, the journey. Her study is divided into nine chapters. It starts with an obligatory preface, including criteria for working on handwritten texts. Moreover, Voß gives a coherent overview of the current state of apodemic research and the history of travel literature. In a special chapter, Voß works out the difference between educational travel journals and other forms of travel descriptions, such as diaries, itineraries, letters, and travel literature. She also points out different purposes and recipients of the written journals.

One chapter explains Voß’s method of research based on searches in German archives and libraries. Although Voß’s decision to include in addition sources found in the regional archive of Linz (Upper Austria) and the state archive of Brussels (Belgium) is irritating, her systematic research brings out an astonishing quantity of thirty-nine documents, underlining Voß’s success. For deeper research the author selects four educative travel journals representing the sixteenth century, written by Michael von der Leyen, Otto von Münchhausen, Philipp von Merode, and Heinrich Wenzel von Münsterberg-Oels. Four further journals display the situation in the seventeenth century, written by Friedrich Gerschow / Philipp Julius von Pommern-Wolgast, Adolf Friedrich I. von Mecklenburg, Johann Wilhelm Neimari / Johann Ernst I. von Sachsen-Weimar, and Georg II. von Hessen-Darmstadt. One large chapter is dedicated to establishing criteria for literary analysis. The author examines the narrative form, the narrative tense and diction, and the form of “how someone reports,” and crosses out repetitions and often-used phrases. Concerning the formal method, she discusses how insertions and corrections have been made and how the texts have been composed. Moreover, the author reviews codicological aspects such as used paper, paper size/format, and written type. She also explores whether original sources have been duplicated, copied in true form, edited for letterpress, or published retrospectively.

The book has adequate and clearly structured citation and includes the recent literature. The text is clear and original quotations are inserted in the continuous text. But “Quellen- und Literaturverzeichnis” (primary sources and secondary literature) is badly structured. Sources with codicological information are followed by historical travel reports—the selection is unclear. So-called “Textausgaben” should have been named editions; “Forschungsliteratur” would have been described clearer as bibliography. In the end the criteria of selection in “Anhang-Transkripte” causes confusion. Another point of criticism concerns the layout. In a text-heavy scientific work one expects some images connected to the content. Unfortunately, here images are placed at the end of the texts, rather than within—unnecessarily complicating the reader’s ease of comprehension. Another critical remark concerns her writing style. Rather than use mainly technical literary terms, the author could have loosened up the text by following the old principle, “keep it short and simple.”

However, Voß has attained her aim. She has succeeded in employing literary-study methods to outline the special (unique?) form of “Bildungsreisebericht” literary-study aspects. In sum, we have a detailed and well-structured work with original findings. Students of historical travel literature must hope for more publications like this.